Spring is in the air!, and so is love and so is pollen — in the air, in your hair, your eyes, your nose, on your car.
You take the bad with the good when the payoff is spring.
Before we meet again it’ll be Officially Spring, so says The 2023 Old Farmer’s Almanac. Monday at 4:24 p.m. (Saw that on Facebook too, so it must be true, right?)
That moment in time marks the spring equinox, which I have never had the patience to study enough to see what it really means in terms of the Earth’s tilt and what not and this and that and to and fro.
I do know “equinox” comes from two Latin words that mean “equal” and “night.” The day and night are basically the same length. And after that, our hemisphere starts tilting toward the sun which means the days are longer and it’s about to get hot up in here.
But you don’t need an almanac to tell you spring is coming. You hear a ball pop into a mitt or you start filling out your NCAA March Madness bracket, and you know what’s up.
Or, you just look outside, through the yellow pollen mist, and there’s springtime, waving back.
A month ago, a warmish February morning, six robins and two cardinals were in the backyard, scouting. They’ve been there since.
The willows are greening, bulbs shooting and blooming. Little pictures of springtime.
Like me, you’ve probably already mowed once, which is mainly mowing clover, and leaving a little of that for the bees since they don’t have much else to enjoy right now. My yard looks like a drunk person mowed it. With thinning shears.
Speaking of lame brain, it was three years ago this week that the world shut down, semi-thwarting the man-made things that complement spring. It was 2020 and Friday the 13th (which was Monday of this week) when college basketball tournaments and then baseball games were cancelled, and then Monday the 16th (tomorrow, Thursday, is the 16th) is when schools quit and all sports quit and Weird Spring started.
(Somebody messed up!)
Thank goodness THAT’s over. At least I think it is …
And, speaking of loopy, those birds in the back yard might have had one too many, and I’ll tell you why.
There is a window-sized mirror along the fence, placed there before we moved in, I suppose for decoration. It’s confused at least one of the robins. She keeps flying into its reflection of grass and water and leaves, landing at its bottom, and trying again. Dozens of times. Flying into the mirror.
It happens almost every day, and maybe it’s the same robin and maybe they are all giving it a whirl, trying to figure it out, trying to fly right into springtime.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu or Twitter @MamaLuvsManning
